Video Management Startup Kaltura Raises Another $25 Million To Expand Into Asia

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Video management startup Kaltura is growing fast, but it’s looking to expand even more, and has raised even more money to do so. The company has closed a $25 million Series D round of funding, which includes money from new investors Mitsui Global Investment and Orix Ventures. Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Intel Capital,.406 Ventures, and Avalon Ventures also participated in the round. Mitsui’s participation is strategic, as Kaltura looks to expand more into the Asia-Pacific market.

Kaltura differentiates itself from online video platforms like Brightcove and Ooyala in a few ways: For one thing, it has an open-source platform that can be deployed by enterprises for free. It also has a modular structure, and allows its customers to purchase pieces of the platform based on their individual needs, rather than providing some kind of one-size-fits-all SaaS-based system. The product is designed so that customers can hook into Kaltura’s own hosted platform, or deploy it behind their own firewalls for maximum security.

Due to the flexibility of its offering, Kaltura has been adopted by a number of non-traditional organizations for video distribution — that includes enterprise customers, government agencies, and academic institutions. Those organizations can create internal video portals and integrate the platform with enterprise tools they use for training, communications, or collaboration, including Drupal, SharePoint, Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai.

Kaltura also has its own developer community, who can create their own plugins to integrate with the ultra-modular system. It’s got more than 40,000 developers signed up, who have created or implemented a number of third-party apps available through the Kaltura Exchange.

Since so much of its business is enterprise-focused, it sells both directly and through partners. Kaltura CEO Ron Yekutiel said that today, about 25 percent of its sales come through third-party resellers and distributors, like InterCall and Blackboard. That number is expected to grow, as the primary revenue driver for its Asia expansion will be distribution partners.

Kaltura was founded in 2007, and has raised nearly $70 million since then, including a $20 million funding round last February that included strategic investor Intel Capital. The company currently has about 200 employees, but plans to expand to about 300, with the opening of regional offices in Asia.